Realms of the Underdark - J. Robert King [46]
The fat moneylender's hairy fingers plucked at the battered wood as it whistled past, and pulled. Overbalanced, the startled man had barely time for an apprehensive grunt as the pommel of Mirt's dagger came up under his chin. The blow sent him swiftly into the arms of the ladies who whisper softly to warriors in slumber: he crashed over like a felled tree, spitting teeth from his shattered jaw, eyes already dark.
The second man had to dance around the falling body, and met Mirt's roundhouse left while still trying to raise his cudgel. Mirt let his knuckles take the man's head into the nearest wall, hard, and felt something break under them before he spun away to follow the drifting lights again, wheezing along patiently as if nothing had befallen. The two slumped forms in the alley did not rise to follow.
Another dagger flashed out of the darkness, and a bucketful of stones plummetted from the air as Mirt trudged under one of the many catwalks that crisscrossed the emptiness above most streets and passages of Skullport. His shields sent both offerings back whence they'd come, journeys marked by strangled, gurgling cries.
Mirt sighed in reply-Faerun certainly seemed to breed no pressing shortage of fools these days-and hunched his shoulders to pass under a particularly low catwalk.
A garotte slipped down and around his throat as he emerged into the torchlight beyond-but the fat old lord paid it no apparent heed, striding deliberately on. Only the corded muscles rising into view on his thick neck betrayed the effort it took to walk on without slowing, as the waxed cord skittered over the hard, smooth steel of the gorget that covered his grizzled throat.
It took less than a breath before the wheezing merchant reached the full stretch of the deadly cord and the skilled arms that wielded it. With a startled oath, their leather-clad owner pitched forward out of the darkness above, hauled down into the street like a grain-sack from a loft. A casual swing of one thick arm brought a belt dagger solidly into the masked man's temple, and the garotte fell to the cobbles alongside its limp and crumpled owner. Mirt did not even bother to look down; this was Skullport, after all. Moreover, business awaited him ahead… and if he knew Durnan, 'twould be hasty business.
Three masked figures stepped out of a side alley, down the passage ahead of him, but Mirt showed no sign of slowing or drawing the stout sword at his belt. He forged on steadily into waiting death, and after a tense moment one of the three stepped back and waved at his fellows to do likewise.
"Your pardon, Mirt," he growled. "You're looking so well, I almost didn't know you."
"Prettily said, Ilbarth," Mirt grunted, turning suddenly to glare at one of the others, who'd sidled just a step too close to the fat old man's back. "So ye can live, all of ye."
"Generous, White-Whiskers," that man said softly, "when it's three to one."
"I'm known for my open-handed generosity," Mirt said, baring his teeth in a grin without slowing, "so I'll let ye live a second time, Aldon. Take care ye don't use up all thy luck and my patience, now."
Aldon took one uncertain step in pursuit of the wheezing man. "How'd you know my name?"
"He knows everyone in Skullport," Ilbarth said with a nervous grin. "Isn't that right, Mirt? I'll bet cold coin you've lived all your life down here."
"Not yet," Mirt grunted, turning to fix him with one cold and level gray-blue eye. "Not quite yet."
He turned away from them and went on down the alley without looking back, but the three men did not follow. They stood watching him for a time, and soon had cause to be very glad they'd not proceeded with more violent activities.
The old moneylender strode past a tentacle that slid down from an upper window to pluck aloft a man who'd summoned it, stepped around an ore sprawled on its face in a pool of blood, a spear standing up in its back- and found